


One Hundred and Two Stitches

by BattleAngel



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: GDOV for some maybe gory descriptions, I Will Go Down With This Ship, MLB oneshots, basically marichat crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 06:57:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BattleAngel/pseuds/BattleAngel
Summary: But obviously sleep deprived Marinette had totally forgotten her parent’s warnings as she jerkily ascended the steps up to the door, grumbling and muttering about disrespectful pigeons, why couldn’t they let her be.She unlatched the door and stuck her head up, ready to scold inconsiderate birds. But the usual night-life was nowhere to be seen.Instead, Marinette found a cat.A mangey, blond, green-eyed cat in leather, begging to be let in.And she certainly wouldn’t have obliged, had it not been for the blood.
Relationships: Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Chat Noir
Comments: 14
Kudos: 125





	One Hundred and Two Stitches

**Author's Note:**

> So, MLB oneshots, fun. I wrote this instead of studying or working on OoA/oRaR, both of which would have been a more productive ways to spend a 4.00 at night writing spree.  
> So here, take 2.5k words of pure Marichat crack. *throws chapter at unsuspecting readers, runs off to pass classes*

Marinette was sewing. She’d had a midnight revelation and woken up to her own excited, unconscious shout. 

She looked at the clock. 1.30 at night. Late, but not as terribly as usual. She was in a happy little world where the only things in existence were her needle, the sheer fabric, and the fantastic vision that stretched before her of a magnificent evening gown. 

She had been stuck on a single detail for weeks now, and in that frustrating time her usual flow of creativity had been gummed up by the simple arrangement of a single folded hem. Then it had come to her, in a nighttime epiphany.

So much for showing up on time tomorrow.

She was just about to start the second layer when a furious rapping on her trapdoor shattered her concentration. 

Marinette jumped, and promptly winced in pain. She had stuck her finger with the needle. _All the curses_ , she thought as she daubed a tissue on the pinprick of scarlet welling on the tip of her finger. 

She slugged her way over to the stairs leading up to her loft bed and trapdoor, grumbling all the way. 

The thumps above increased tenfold.

Normally by this time Marinette would be a little suspicious, and going nowhere near the trapdoor. One of the conditions her parents had instilled when they first let her move up to the attic was that she didn’t mess with the door at night, that you never knew who could be on the other side. Thoroughly scared out of her wits, Little Marinette had heartily agreed. 

But obviously Sleep Deprived Marinette had totally forgotten her parent’s warnings as she jerkily ascended the steps up to the door, grumbling and muttering about _disrespectful pigeons, why couldn’t they let her be_. She unlatched the door and stuck her head up, ready to scold inconsiderate birds. But the usual night-life was nowhere to be seen. 

Instead, Marinette found a cat. 

A mangey, blond, green-eyed cat in leather, begging to be let in. 

And she certainly wouldn’t have obliged, had it not been for the blood.

Concerningly large quantities of blood, splashed all over her balcony sanctuary.

Marinette’s eyes popped as she registered what she saw. 

_“Mon Minou…_ ”

He clutched his abdomen, as if trying to keep it all from escaping. Futile.

He was pale, so pale, and his teeth chattered as something clattered to the ground.

A rusty slice of metal, coated in a metallic sheen. It must have been stuck to the wound. 

If she didn’t help him, he would die here. 

Her hands clamped over her mouth to keep herself from screaming, from waking up the whole block in terror.

He raised his head to look up at her, eyes pleading silently.

Her jaw set. She knew what she had to do.

Raising a trembling hand, she intoned-”Stay,” then disappeared down into her attic room. A moment later she popped back up, gallon Ziploc bag in hand. 

He looked at her, fear evident on his scrunched features, vibrant eyes wide in terror.

“M… Marinette?” he rasped questioningly.

“You have to lie flat now,” she said, steel in her tone. “I have to disinfect it.”

He whimpered. “I don’t think I can-” a violent cough choked from his throat and spurned more. With each lurch, the blood spurted.

“Chat, you have to.” 

He kept coughing, ears pressed flat against his head.

“Chat? _Chat!_ ” Panic filled her eyes as his coughs turned to dry heaves.

Her breath caught in her throat desperately. “ _CHAT!”_

Chat Noir began to shake, his limbs flying out of control as his eyes dilated in and out. 

She couldn’t wait any longer. She dove into the whirlwind that was Chat Noir and tried to hold him down. His clawed hands caught at her. Once, twice, three times they connected, leaving angry red slashes. But she held on fiercely, til the last of his strength was sapped and he lay motionless, eyes staring blankly up at the starry night sky.

Marinette sobbed as she staunched the blood. It was slowing to a slow ooze, no doubt work of his kwami. But she knew Plagg couldn’t fix this on his own.

The next step would be tricky.

Marinette, still holding the wad of cloth on him, unscrewed the cap of the rubbing alcohol. There was no easy way to do this. As Ladybug, she knew his suit unzipped. She pulled the bell at his throat down like a zipper, and when the edge ran off over the gash, she was able to pull the rest of the zipper open, all the way down to his navel. 

Her tears renewed when she saw the wound. The slash in his perfect skin split just below his left pec and continued across his abdomen down to his right hip. Where the blood had moved a little she could see his insides.

Bloody meat.

The edges were ugly and tattered, and blood returned every time she wiped it away.

Okay.

She could do this.

With a few deep breaths, she dragged a fresh cloth down the laceration, clearing a momentarily blood-free path for the antiseptic. 

Chat was too exhausted to move, but she could tell by his eyes that he was in terrible pain- the black pupil completely filled the green iris. 

Marinette sobbed as she poured the clear liquid over Chat Noir’s torn chest. She whispered brokenly with every slosh-

“ _I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry…_ ”

And when the last of the disinfectant had streamed off, she pulled out of her bag the third item she’d brought to her rooftop operating theater. 

Her needle and thread.

The final step in this terrible procedure.

She knew she wasn’t in any way qualified to do this. But the _centre hospitalier_ was at least an hour away, and her minou is bleeding to death _now_. 

On her balcony.

So she puts a wall of iron around her heart, and readies her materials. She pours disinfectant over the needle and to disinfect it, and bends the needle into a crescent moon, like you were supposed to use when stitching up people.

She’s seen that on _Équipe Médicale d'Urgence_ once, probably.

And she began the procedure.

Every puncture drew a whimper of pain from Chat, but he didn’t move a muscle. The thread dragging through his flesh, emerging slick with pus and blood and meat. Every stitch was a tie-off, and then she would clip the glistening thread with her little silver scissors. 

Then start the process over again.

...

One hundred and two.

Marinette Dupain-Cheng put one hundred and two stitches in Chat Noir.

She had to think of it as sewing. Regular old sewing.

Poke, pull, tie, snip.

Poke, pull, tie, snip.

Poke, pull, tie, snip.

Poke, pull, tie, snip.

One hundred and two.

When she reached the end of the fissure in his body, she was surprised. She looked up at her handiwork, following the path drawn by her clumsy, neophyte hands. 

They started out messy and broad, but gradually became neat and small.

One hundred and two.

Little beads of blood still squeezed out from between her surgical interventions, but nothing like the tide from before.

Chat Noir was still. Somewhere around seventy-three his eyes began to flutter, and at eighty-six he was passed out. The only indication he was still alive was the ragged breaths that rose and fell along her handiwork. 

But he lived.

Rain began to patter on the balcony.

Marinette looked around to fully take in the chaos. Flower pots knocked over in his seizure, a dent in the stylized railing where he must have landed, and, of course, the blood. 

Her whole terrace was painted in a rusty, metallic scarlet. Marinette herself was caked in it. Her hair, her pyjamas. 

But the rain that was beginning to pound promised to wash it all away.

Marinette looked at Chat. He was still stretched out flat on the floorboards, but his unzipped suit still revealed the ugly wound, and he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably in the icy downpour. 

Marinette sighed.

There was nothing else for it. She would have to let him sleep inside. She would wake him and tell him to go home, but he looked so peaceful. Besides, he really shouldn’t be up and leaping rooftops with that new souvenir of his. 

So she resigned herself to fate and dragged him over to the trapdoor. As soon as she moved him he began to mumble and whine, but put up no physical affront to being shoved about like a sack of flour.

After much pain and suffering, Marinette had Chat Noir lying on her bed, which was directly below the trapdoor.

She supposed she could deal with sleeping on the chaise for one night, if it meant forgoing the ordeal of getting him down the steps.

She tromped down the steps to her vanity, where she cleaned up, doing some bitter work scrubbing the blood out of her scalp. The rain now pounding overhead had washed most of it off her face. 

She glanced at the clock. 4.45. _Ugh._ No time to shower properly. _Oh well._

She stumbled into the closet to change into fresh pyjamas, and tossed the old in her sink for now. 

She intended to sleep on the chaise, she really had. But when she went back up to her bed to retrieve some blankets and her cat plushie, it just looked so _warm._ Warm enough that at this hour her brain wasn’t functioning at the proper capacity for her to freak out about maybe-accidentally-on-purpose crawling onto her bed. 

It was _her_ bed, after all. There just happened to be an extra object adorning its fantastically comfortable surface. 

A warm thing that may or may not have been a body, but sure was comfortable to cuddle with. 

She barely registered the tail subconsciously tangling her to him, the purr lodged deep in his throat at the contact between them. Her arms found his back and pulled him close, nestling her face in the crevice of his collarbone. He curved around her, his gloved hands trailing lazy circles on her shoulder blades as they fit together. Their legs entwined, his leather-clad calves hooking around her white leggings and folding them together. 

His slow, deep breaths rustled her hair minutely, and hers warmed his very bones. She could feel his heartbeat, the purr vibrating through his marred and bared chest.

They slept deeply, entwined together in Marinette’s twin bed.

For two glorious hours.

………..

The alarm was a monstrosity. It blared through the peaceful silence like a siren.

Marinette groaned, “Five more minutessss…” and snuggled back into Chat. But when the alarm insisted that she needed to be up _now_ , she groaned in defeat and wriggled out of the body-bind that was Chat Noir’s embrace to lazily smack the alarm off the raining and down to her bedroom floor below. Unfortunately, it was undaunted by her pitiful display, and kept right on blaring.

Marinette groaned. “No, it’s too early…: and proceeded to burrow back down into Chat’s arms. 

Suddenly, she realised that something was off. This smelled like leather. Her bed wasn’t supposed to smell anything like leather. Heck, the only thing she knew of that smelled of leather was-

_Wait._

Marinette opened her eyes.

_-Marinette.ex has stopped working.-_

_This is bad._

_This is really, really bad._

_But also kinda nice._

_What?_

_Oh._

_It is._

_WHAT?_

Chat Noir chose that moment to open his eyes. For a moment, they were lost in opia, a peaceful expression adorning his features. 

Then his gaze landed on her terrified eyes.

Pupils contracted.

He looked down slowly. 

His open, bare chest. Their tangled legs. His own traitorous tail, virtually tying the two of them together.

He met her eyes and gulped. 

“Uhm…” he tried.

She locked eyes with him. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.

“I guess we should..”

“Yeah,” she answered hurriedly. 

They quickly separated. Sitting awkwardly at opposite sides of the bed, Marinette giggled nervously. Chat decided to break the ice.

“Thank you,” he blurted. She looked up at him, quirking an eyebrow and blushing at the same time. “For saving me,” he continued. “I probably would have died. So, thanks.”

“Uh, anytime?” Marinette offered. 

“It looks like you did a pretty good job,” Chat said, peering down at his abdomen before zipping his bell back up. (the suit had repaired itself during the night?) 

“It’s just simple sewing. You’re not much different from a t-shirt,” she joked. Chat laughed.

Suddenly, his eyes widened, and he reached a tentative hand out to trace her cheek. “You’re hurt,” he said in horror.

Marinette lifted and eyebrow, and touched her cheek to feel raised red welts in the shape of Chat’s claws. 

They realised this at the same time, and his eyes widened as he snatched his gloved hand from her face as if he might burn her.

“I did it....” he whimpered. 

“No!” said Marinette, waving her hands frantically. “Well, technically, yes. But you were in serious pain and probably having a seizure, so it doesn’t count.” 

He tensed, and drew away from her.

“Princess, I _hurt_ you,” he whispered roughly. “It counts.”

Marinette tried to lay a comforting hand on his arm, but he jerked away, and looked at her with shame-filled eyes. 

“I-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all of this.” He stood, and made to unlatch the trapdoor above them. “I’ll go now. You’ll never see me again, I swear.” He began to back away, opening the trapdoor that led out to the balcony where he had nearly died.

“Chat?” Marinette said. “Chat, wait!” 

But he had pulled the door open and was gone, running off into the pink-streaked dawn. 

The alarm still blared from the floor below, but it sounded a mile away. Marinette numbly closed the trapdoor, and turned to the steps. She heard her maman calling from the bottom of the stairs, saying it was time to get up. She robotically shut off the alarm, changed, and went downstairs. Grabbing her bag and kissing her maman, off she went with a heavy heart.

Unbeknownst to her, the boy sitting in front of her carried the same heart, as well as one hundred and two stitches. Six per one inch of the seventeen-inch laceration, healing quickly on his abdomen.

She didn’t know that if the boy in front of her had currently been in possession of a tail, it would be tied around her waist with a bow.

Tied to a hundred and two stitches, and a single night that changed everything.


End file.
